Saturday, May 16, 2009

Winning the Lean Race - "What's the Right Lean Implementation Speed?"

If accomplishment wins the race, why do we often drive at the speed of activity?

Is it because those above us can't see our true "Lean" speed? After all, business scorecard measures usually aggregate too much data to be good gauges of Lean progress over short time periods. With this fact in mind, and in the absence of a good "lean speedometer", maybe executive management interprets more activity as "moving faster".

If this is the case, how do we correct the situation? Is it managment's job to come up with the right measurement to accurately indicate Lean progress? Or is that up to a technical person in charge of the technical side of your Lean effort? Or, maybe a financial person on your "Lean" team?

If you took on the challenge to create a "Lean Implementation Speedometer" what would your design look like? Would you be able to get agreement on one, or maybe a few, simple measures? Or would you want to try-out several measures, "dashboard" style, to give a larger audience a way to help you sort out what the indicators should be? If so, what metrics would you shop-around first?

No comments:

Accessible Strategy Deployment

A continuous transformation mechanism with simple rules that are practical for any business or organization. Apply the rules to accelerate cycles of change, growth and innovation success. Speed the growth and development of your business.